"I don't like it very much, but what are you gonna do?" Healy said in a phone interview. "If people were responding to his message, it was very similar to Tom Foley's message, so certainly that's a sad conclusion of this campaign."

For months during the early part of the gubernatorial campaign this year, Marsh ran as a Republican, before he changed parties and became the Independent Party's standard bearer for the state's highest office.

"Tom being a Republican first selectman of Chester and talking about lifting the burden off local communities and cutting the size of government certainly had an impact on the election, I would say, to Tom Foley's detriment" Healy said. "But he got on the ballot legitimately and he campaigned legitimately and these are some of the `what ifs?' of any close election."

Marsh said in a Saturday afternoon interview that he has received a few e-mails from Republicans who believe Foley would have won if Marsh didn't take away votes. But Marsh doesn't agree with the premise. He thinks he took away support equally from Foley and Malloy.

"You can't just cherry pick," he said. "I'm quite certain it was an even split. I know for certain I took away Malloy votes in Chester, where I took 16 percent of the town vote. Everybody in town, through this whole thing, has been good about it."

What Foley thinks

Foley, in a phone interview Saturday, said that in some respects, Marsh was closer to Malloy in campaign proposals, particularly the need to raise taxes.

"I don't know the answer to the question of whether he took support away from me," Foley said.

"When we looked at our internal polling, it looked like Tom was taking support away from Dan and that he was not hurting me as much as he was hurting Dan."

Foley's polls showed Marsh shifting away support from Democrats at a rate of three-to-one, compared to Republicans.

"I was proud of the fact that I beat Tom Marsh in his hometown," Foley said with a laugh.

In Chester, Marsh got 261 votes, Malloy 765 and Foley 617.

Marsh did best in his running mate Cicero Booker's hometown of Waterbury, collecting 584 votes. The Independent Party duo topped 300 votes in Wallingford, Milford, Manchester and Bristol. They scored 113 votes in Bridgeport.

Roy Occhiogrosso, Malloy's campaign adviser, said Saturday that there's no way to really find out where the damage was done without actually talking to those who cast ballots for Marsh.

"Some votes would have gone to Tom and some would have gone to Dan," Occhiogrosso said.

"Some people might not have voted at all. It's always speculative unless you talk to the people who voted for Marsh. All of the polling data indicated a close race and none of the polls even included Marsh. Dan was up a couple points until the end, when he was down a couple points. Dan might have won by more in Marsh hadn't run."

Marsh anticipated being crushed on Election Night.

He and Booker, a Waterbury alderman, received only a fraction of the more than a million votes split nearly equally by Foley and Malloy.

But the 17,586 votes allow the Independent Party to avoid the state's prolonged petitioning process in 2012.

Marsh, who had to collect more than 7,000 signatures this year to reach the ballot, said he believes the local Chester Democratic and Republican leaders were nice enough to only put up a few lawn signs of his better-financed opponents.

What a vote cost?

While Malloy participated in the state's public financing program and had $8.7 million to spend, Foley invested about $11 million of his own fortune and spent about $12.5 million, according to the latest filings with the State Elections Enforcement Commission posted Saturday. Marsh raised and spent about $10,000, spending about 57 cents per vote.

Malloy collected 566,498 votes, at a cost of about $15.36 per vote. Foley got 560,861 votes at a cost of $22.29 per ballot.

Marsh's overall aim was to get 1-percent of the total votes cast to give the group minor-party status and automatic-ballot lines in the next election. That target of about 11,000 was easily reached.

"The election more than met the objectives set early in the campaign. The Independent Party qualified for ballot status in every Constitutional office race, as well as numerous state legislative races," he said.

"We now set about the work of building on that success and expanding our grassroots organization.

"I congratulate Dan Malloy on his hard- fought victory and wish him well as he begins the task of addressing the significant challenges facing Connecticut," Marsh said in a statement.

Marsh was crowded out of the race for the GOP gubernatorial nomination by better-known and wealthier candidates including Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele of Stamford and Foley, who won the primary.